Shale Daily

The roundup of energy patch rustlers in North Texas continues with investigators now having accounted for more than $1 million worth of stolen petroleum products, according to the Wise County Sheriff’s Office.

High oil prices have lifted producer interest in liquids-rich natural gas plays; they’ve also pulled up the economic attractiveness of converting gas to liquid fuels and other products.

The Chesapeake Bay, long plagued by pollution from development across its 64,000-square-mile watershed, is showing “some encouraging signs of improvement,” but is still “dangerously out of balance” and needs to be protected from a variety of threats, including natural gas drilling operations in the Marcellus Shale, according to the Chesapeake Bay Foundation’s (CBF) “2010 State of the Bay” report.

Truck traffic on Pennsylvania roads that is generated by Marcellus Shale drilling operations has cost the state $30-35 million more than the industry is providing for road repairs, according to a report by the state’s Department of Transportation (DOT).

Moving up the ladder to become the second largest acreage holder within the liquids-rich Bakken Shale oil play in North Dakota, Hess Corp. said Wednesday it has completed the acquisition of 167,000 net acres in the region from TRZ Energy LLC for $1.05 billion in cash.

A citizens group is calling on Murrysville, PA, to ban hydraulic fracturing (fracking) in the borough, located about 20 miles east of Pittsburgh in Westmoreland County.

The Riverstone/Carlyle Global Energy and Power Funds Monday announced completion of the acquisition of USA Compression Holdings LP, the parent company of USA Compression Partners LLC, a natural gas compression services company headquartered in Austin and Dallas, TX. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

The borough council of Ford City, PA, about 40 miles northeast of Pittsburgh in Armstrong County, is considering a proposal from EXCO Resources Inc. to lease nearly 300 acres of borough land for Marcellus Shale gas drilling operations.

Underscoring what a Canadian research firm said earlier in the month about North American shale and Mexico’s growing gas demand, Sempra Energy’s top gas executive told NGI’s Shale Daily that a strong economy and growing natural gas demand make south of the border an attractive future market for ramped up shale gas production.